Outreachy remote interships for supporting diversity

[weiji14]

Description of the desired feature

Something to think about for proactively attracting new contributors - Outreachy is a remote internship program for supporting diversity in open source and free software. Similar to Google Summer of Code but more targeted at under-represented groups.

Outreachy internships are 3 months long. Interns are paid an internship stipend of $5,500 USD. Interns have a $500 USD travel stipend to attend conferences or events.

Interns work with experienced mentors from open source communities. Outreachy internship projects may include programming, user experience, documentation, illustration, graphical design, data science, project marketing, user advocacy, or community event planning.

Outreachy internships are open to applicants around the world. Interns work remotely. Interns are not required to move.

We expressly invite women (both cis and trans), trans men, and genderqueer people to apply. We also expressly invite applications from residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American/American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

Anyone who faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country is invited to apply.

---

Action points

For community leaders @GenericMappingTools/python: We should try and put in a funding application by Feb 2021 for the mid-2021 round, or Sep 2021 for the end-2021 round (see https://www.outreachy.org/outreachy-december-2020-internship-round/ as a past template). Oh, and someone needs to volunteer to be a mentor 🙂

For interested intern applicants reading this: Let us know down in this post (or via email/social media) on what you would be interested to work on (e.g. documentation/tutorials/new features/workshops/etc).

---

Timeline

Important Round Dates	Mid-year Internships	End of year Internships
Call for communities and mentored projects opens	January	August
Deadline for new participating communities	February	September
Deadline for submitting new mentored projects	March	October
Initial applications open	late January	late August
Initial applications due	March	October
Contribution period opens	February	September
Final application and contributions due	April	November
Interns announced	April	November
Internships start	May	December
Internships end	August	March

---

Follow up of #672 and inspired by @leouieda's comment in #677 (comment)_.

Also need to work on our diversity, let's try and avoid an 'all male' author paper

Yes! And this takes long term effort on our part. Real effort, not just having the door open but search for people to invite inside. GMT has had an open door for 30 years and that hasn't worked. Same with Numpy. Things only change when we actively push for it.

Are you willing to help implement and maintain this feature? Yes, but might need some help with writing the grant application

[maxrjones]

This program looks great. I did a bit more research into the structure and this is my interpretation of the information on the Outreachy site. In order to mentor an intern, we would need to be become part of an outreachy community or start a new community. Starting a community seems like the more likely path forward, in which case we would need to provide funding for at least one intern ($6,500 USD). So, perhaps another action item is to pursue funding opportunities to support an intern and become a community on the September timeline.

[weiji14]

This program looks great. I did a bit more research into the structure and this is my interpretation of the information on the Outreachy site. In order to mentor an intern, we would need to be become part of an outreachy community or start a new community. Starting a community seems like the more likely path forward, in which case we would need to provide funding for at least one intern ($6,500 USD). So, perhaps another action item is to pursue funding opportunities to support an intern and become a community on the September timeline.

Ah yes, good spotting, Do you think we could tie this in with the NASA proposal somehow (i.e. use part of that grant to fund an Outreachy intern)? The intern doesn't have to be PyGMT specific, we could have her/him do core GMT stuff too. Might be a discussion point for the GMT community meeting tomorrow. Either way, this probably does need to get pushed out to September.

[maxrjones]

We didn't put funding for an intern in the budget. We could also discuss whether it could tie in with the active NSF grant, should I add this to the agenda for tomorrow?

[weiji14]

Yep, please add it to the meeting agenda 😄

[maxrjones]

Following up about the conversation from the community meeting and @PaulWessel's question, here's some information about steps from the Outreachy website:

• Find funding for at least one intern ($6,500)
• Find a volunteer to be the community coordinator (main point of contact between Outreachy and the community’s mentors and volunteers)
• Find community volunteers who can answer Outreachy questions during the six week application period
• Find at least two mentors who can commit to the mentor requirements
• Mentors define a project for an Outreachy intern and define a set of smaller contributions outreachy applicants can complete during the application phase.
• Volunteers spend 1-5 hours/wk during the six-week application period to help out Outreachy applicants in contributing and answer questions
• Mentors sign the mentorship agreement, review application eligibility, review applicant contributions, and communicate with the community coordinator and Outreachy if there are too many/few applications (5-10 hours/week for six weeks)
• Mentors work with the intern during a three month internship (5 hours/week)
• Mentors track intern progress and report progress to Outreachy organizers

[weiji14]

Cool, this checklist makes things much clearer! I need to read up more on the Outreachy Participation rules to understand the community-coordinator/mentor/intern relationship, seems very complicated. But happy to put my hand up to be 1 of the 2 mentors, and contribute to the funding application writing (need to start learning how the real world works).

P.S. Since this thread might get long, should we move this to the forum or https://github.com/GenericMappingTools/gmt/discussions (since Outreachy doesn't have to be strictly for PyGMT)? Once we get the funding application/outreachy community sorted, we can then put an advertisement post on the forum or social media to find an intern.